While it is seen as a better alternative to smoking, vaping comes with its own risks.
And for those looking to quit, it can be hard. Just like with its tobacco-based sister product, it isn’t easy for everyone to put the habit down.
Many of us heading in to 2025 will be looking at ways we can improve our health – which could be as simple as drinking coffee only before a certain time or cutting out three specific foods.
Well, for those who vape and want to give it up, new research has suggested the best way you can quit the habit and not come back to it.
Quitting vaping
A new study has been produced on how to quit vaping in the most successful way. It comes as disposable vapes are set to be banned in the UK with a significant vaping tax brought in for those using refillable vapes.
Co-led by University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, it set out to identify the most effective strategies for helping people give up the nicotine product.
And the findings, published on Tuesday (7 January) in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, indicate there is a simple way to aid your ability.
“This is an area of research that is in its infancy, but is growing rapidly and organically from people who vape asking about help to quit vaping,” says Hartmann-Boyce.
“We also know that people who use vaping as a way to transition away from smoking are often keen to know how they can safely transition away from vaping without relapsing to smoking, which is really important.”
Best way to quit vaping, according to the research
The findings from Hartmann-Boyce and her team reveal that a specific prescription drug may be the best way to quit vaping for those serious about wanting to give up the product.
Known as varenicline (sometimes also as Champix), it is a prescription medication often used to help people stop smoking.
But that isn’t all. The research suggests that text message-based interventions could be really productive especially in those of a younger age who might have started vaping as adolescents.
In the quit-vaping review, the team of scientists, including co-lead authors Nicola Lindson and Ailsa Butler at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, pinpointed nine relevant randomised studies involving more than 5,000 people. The researchers aimed to evaluate and assess the effectiveness of tools that have been tested to help individuals quit vaping.
“The interventions tested are similar to those that we know work for helping people quit smoking,” Hartmann-Boyce says. “We don’t know, however, that they necessarily help people quit vaping, and that’s why it’s important that we have these trials.”
The study found that help-to-quit programmes designed to deliver support via text messages seem to be effective for young people aged 13 to 24.
At the same time varenicline was potentially effective for adults trying to quit vaping. However, due to the limited number of studies, this evidence for both approaches was low certainty and, the researchers explain, needs to be investigated further.
“With the results of our Cochrane review, healthcare professionals now have initial evidence for specific approaches they can recommend, particularly for younger people wanting to quit vaping,” Butler says. “However, we urgently need more research to explore these and other approaches.”
Varenicline was rolled out across the NHS in November 2024, with the drug shown to work as well as vapes to help people stop smoking and be a more effective aid than nicotine-replacement gum or patches.
The daily pill is to be offered by the NHS to tens of thousands of smokers each year in England to provide another option to help them quit. It works by blocking the craving effect on the brain.
Whether it will be approved for those who crave vapes alongside those addicted to tobacco products remains to be seen.
